Burda Style For people who sew

Description

I’ve been researching my whole life to make this dress! The 1920s are my favorite decade. I love trolling the web for the sumptuous fabrics, the beads, the lace , the colors, the tassels! The undergarments!

Finally my delightful daughter asked me to make a 1920s dress for her. The research was exhaustive and soo… much fun! But it was so hard to decide – so many beautiful ideas to choose from! I now have about 100 projects waiting in the wings.

It all started to fall into place when we went shopping together and found the upholstery remnant that we made the coat from. Then we found the beautiful brown lace! Then we remembered the furry fleece remnant from something last year. I just had to make that beautiful remnant turn into a 20’s movie star coat! So we had our colors to match! Found the iridescent gold green poly chiffon at High Fashion Fabrics in Houston and my daughter picked out the lovely blue green poly satin (we could not afford silk )

Then instead of a cloche I found the beautiful inspiration for the beaded headdress – so 20s! It was on the blog of a lovely lady who shares my obsession and has a fabulous collection of vintage dresses
( http://sydneyflapper.livejournal.com/ )

I knew I wanted to do beads and lots of them, but realistically I could not cover the whole dress with beads so I opted for some gold painted chrysanthemums. I actually carved a stamp, but it did not work, so I printed out a bunch of copies of he design and painted over them by hand. (faster than beading anyway!)

Also we were planning a flapper style skirt with square panels, but the time was running out, so we revised our design to flower petals and I like it better!.

I guess I should mention that we adapted New Look 6086 to our needs for both the under dress and the over dress, lowering the neckline and the arm holes for that 20s silhouette.

Oh one more thing, here’s a tutorial for beaded net that really helped me understand how to do the beads for the front of the under dress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAHfZMGGk2U

Also there was a great article in one of the bead magazines recently about making medallions which helped me a lot. Whew!

And a great big thanks to my fabulous family for pictures, patience and enthusiasm!

Categories

Season

Fall

For

Women

Garment Type

Dress

Style

Evening Wear, Vintage

Material

Chiffon, Leather/Fur, Lace/Sequins, Polyester, Satin